Fallen Star
by Matrix Refugee
Summary: Helping the Carpenters get the house ready for the holidays turns into a lesson in tough love between Harry and one of Molly's siblings.


Title: Fallen Star

Author: Matrix Refugee (aka Morraeon on the JB forums)

Verse: Combined book/TV-verse (don't kill me, I like 'em both equally since I found both at exactly the same time)

Characters: Harry, the Carpenter clan

Prompt: Stars

Word Count:

Rating: PG (for teenage rebelliousness and language)

Spoilers: Takes place a few weeks after Small Favor

Summary: Helping the Carpenters get the house ready for the holidays turns into a lesson in tough love between Harry and one of Molly's siblings.

Disclaimer: The Dresden Files do not belong to me, just playing in the universe and shying snowballs at Jim's fanfic-phobic rules-lawyers (not such a bad thing, since it cuts down on the risk of badfic.

Author's Note: Minor self-insert of myself and my dad, and this story is probably going to get majorly Jossed once "Mean Streets", the anthology featuring Jim's new Michael-centric novella, "The Warrior" comes out in a week. A bit sentimental and sparkly, but hey, it's a holiday-fic and they tend that way.

I've never been a huge fan of the holidays, but I'm no Scrooge by any stretch of the imagination. But this year, after Mab called in one of the favors I owed her, and my best friend nearly lost his life in the process, I had a tougher time getting into the spirit of things than usual. Bob didn't make it any easier by belting out fourteenth century answers to "Jingle Bells" every time I was in the office; I swore he took a sadistic sense of glee in subjecting Molly and I to every last damn verse of "Gloucestershire Wassail".

My apprentice, however, seemed to sense this as I drove her home, a week before Christmas, following a training session in tracking spells that had nearly gotten us into the path of some overworked kobolds who were as gleeful about the season as I was. "We're decorating our Christmas tree tonight," Molly said, turning to me in the shotgun seat of the jeep as I maneuvered the snowy streets of the city. "You want to join us?"

I wondered if it was a polite way of asking me to come in out of the cold when I dropped her off, since the heater had gone out in the jeep. I could tell she was trying to keep up a good face. Things had not been easy for her and her family, since the Denarians' goons had shot up Michael nearly a month earlier.

I managed to keep my concern behind a mask of snarking. "Well, as long as the lights aren't those fancy sets with microchips in them programmed to make the bulbs blink in time with 'I Want a Hippotamus for Christmas'," I said. "Plain ol' incandescent lights should be fine." Never mind the times I've blown out bulbs in Murphy's desk light during an especially heated discussion. I didn't want to think what my current state of worry would do to a fully-loaded tannenbaum.

"Nah, don't worry," Molly said. "With all the Jawas and their antics, we have to keep the tree fairly simple. Our Christmases are real traditional, but the important thing is, we're all together." The conviction in her tone hinted at something deeper, more significant this year than ever before. After what happened to Michael, keeping the family together meant more to her and the Carpenters than ever before.

We pulled up in front of the Carpenters' house, which under a coat of snow on the roof and the yard, looked even more like a gingerbread castle than ever. A pick-up truck with a cap stood in the driveway; a tall guy in a green fleece jacket with a garden center logo stitched on the front and a girl who looked too much like him to be anything but his daughter, were hefting an eight-foot cut balsam out of the back.

"Hey, Molly," the guy called out, pulling the tree upright as his daughter held it steady. "This big enough for all your ornaments?"

Molly got out of the jeep, trying to keep an air of adult sophistication, but I could see her eyes sparkle as she looked up and down the tree. "It's perfect, Mike. You pick out the best ones." She moved like she wanted to hug him, but I knew she wouldn't in front of me. Remembering her manners, she quickly introduced me to Mike Maguire and his daughter, Cecilia, friends of theirs from church. "He's been helping around the house, while dad's been in the hospital," Molly added. She introduced me to them as a friend of the family; I felt a sigh of relief that she didn't tell them I was helping her get a hang of her magical talents, but from the way she eyed me quizzically over her metal-rimmed eyeglasses, I got the feeling Cecilia sensed something odd about me. I didn't get the vibe of any major talents about her, but something about her suggested she was, at the very least, a sensitive.

"Need a hand with that tree? Looks like a big one," I offered.

"The more the merrier," Mike said, grinning at me like we were old friends. He hefted the butt of the tree over his shoulder while Cecilia and I took the middle and carried it up the walkway to the front door. As we approached, I saw several of Molly's younger brothers and sisters scamper into the window, already decorated with wreaths and electric candles. Even from the other side of the glass, I could hear them squeal and cheer.

The door opened and Charity looked out, a length of artificial pine garland looped over her arm and a kerchief with a few cobwebs clinging to it tied around her hair. I could see new worry lurking in her face, but it retreated as she smiled broadly.

"Someone order a big Christmas tree?" Mike teased.

Charity pretended to look mad, but she stepped aside and let us enter. "Come on in, and bring the rest of the forest with you," she teased back. Mike chuckled and Cecilia cracked a shy grin as we stepped over the threshold into the hallway which lead back to the kitchen and off to a living room on one side and a dining room on the other. The dining room was cluttered with boxes and bins brimming with strings of lights and decorations, but Charity had already set up one of those kid-safe rubber-resin manger scenes on a sideboard. The living room couch had been moved around to clear a wide space in front of a large window and more boxes of ornaments and decorations and colorful Christmas stockings stood piled on the chairs.

Daniel, the oldest of the Carpenter kids, came down the stairs to the upper storey, carrying still another box with a loop of tinsel garland hanging out of one corner. "This all the ornaments?" he asked. I noticed he'd started growing a chin-beard, which made him look more like a younger version of Michael than ever; clearly, he took his new role as man of the house seriously.

"No, I sent Matthew up to get the last box and find the star," Charity said.

Alicia, who'd recently slipped down the wrong side of thirteen, but thankfully kept her solemn demeanor, looked up from the tangled string of lights she was detangling and adjusted her glasses. "He's been up there an awfully long time," she said.

"I'll go take a look," Molly said, hurrying up the stairs, before Charity could turn to go look for her missing son.

In the meantime, I did my best to stay out of the way of the tree-raising. Daniel fetched a metal tree stand, the kind that looks like a red bucket on three green legs, with four eye-bolts at the compass points. The younger kids clustered on a large chair, herded there by Charity; they watched the proceedings with eyes aglow, whispering excitedly among themselves. Little Harry sat on the floor, watching this with his fist in his mouth, solemn as an angel.

Mike and Cecilia fussed about with the trunk of the tree, trimming off a few inches and a few branches, measuring it by sight and some kind of tree-related cognizance before they attached the stand and hoisted it into place, before another round of tinkering and tweaking to get it to stand up straight. I'd never seen a Christmas tree this big erected -- living out of hotel rooms, my dad and I never had a tree taller than the sickly-looking artificial tree we'd had one year; the ones at my uncle Justin's house seemed to show up miraculously decorated, plus Elaine and I were never allowed to get too close to them. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Charity eyeing me with a look of empathy, as if she'd divined my thoughts. Aside from that, the novelty of the process kept me wrapt until Molly came down with a worried look on her face.

"He won't come down," Molly said to Charity, matter-of-factly.

"What's going on?" Charity asked, frowning, her brow puckering a little.

"I don't know, he's acting like an ass again," she said.

"You're supposed to say donkey," Hope piped up. Molly shot a glare at her sister, but I could see her cheeks turning pink.

"He grumbled something about Harry being here," Molly added.

"You mean Bill!" Amanda called out. Now it was my turn to blush: even after four years, I still can't get used to hearing one of the kids chime in like that.

Mike looked at Charity and back at the tree. Cecilia shuffled her feet a little and tried not to look nervous. "You want us to help you out with the lights, or have you guys got that covered?" he asked, covering his own awkwardness.

"It's all right, we're good to go. Thank you," Charity said, so gracefully, she could make Jackie Kennedy look like an awkward girl with braces on her teeth. "You've probably got other deliveries to make and it's going to snow again. We won't keep you."

The tree-bringers made their goodbyes and offered to keep Michael in their prayers, along with making more offers of the "If there's anything we can do to help…" variety. Some of the miasma of ruffled manners lifted, but Charity's face looked worn even as she turned back to help Daniel and Molly with the lights.

"Maybe I should go have a word with him, if I'm the problem," I offered.

Charity looked up from rummaging in a box of extension cords. "Do you think that's wise?" she asked.

"If I'm the source of the problem, maybe I can help him find a solution," I said.

Daniel, Molly, and Charity looked at each other. "I'd better come up behind you, in case he gets nasty. I wouldn't want you to have to zap him or something," Daniel said.

"Nothing doing, I'm more likely to use a well-placed grab hold than a spell," I said. "Not everything can or should be solved with magic." And this was one of those cases.

Nonetheless, I felt a little less wary with Daniel at my heels as I ascended the stairs to the second floor. A pull-down set of steps to the attic had been lowered in the middle of the hallway, in front of the door to the master bedroom. A glimpse around the half-open door showed the king-size bed, with its hand-carved headboard, was made up for only one, but a framed picture of a younger Michael, his hair and beard free of grey and a gentle smile crossing his face, was perched next to the solitary pillow. I pulled my gaze away and looked up the pull-down stairs. A light shone in the square opening to the attic. Feeling Daniel's gaze on me, I turned to look him in the eye and gave him a grim, "here goes nothing" grin before I climbed up the stairs.

The attic looked like most attics: a jumble of boxes and trunks, marked with labels like "spring dresses" and "boy's room", items packed away awaiting another season. One corner, clearly the Christmas corner was almost bare of boxes, except for a couple of large plastic bins containing Christmas tree baubles. Next to them sat Matthew, hands on his knees, his dark hair mussed and a shiny streak of tears hiding on side of his nose. Poor kid was just barely old enough to get his learner's permit, and now, at that precarious age, he'd been saddled with the responsibility of being the second in command to his brother. I didn't blame him for crying or being mad at me, since I was, indirectly at least, partly to blame for his father's injuries.

I saw what may have triggered the meltdown: on the floor in front of him lay the shattered parts of a large star tree-topper, an antique gadget from the Space Age craze of the 1950s, that looked for all the world like a miniature Sputnik. The lighted plastic spokes had snapped off and the bulbs inside had shattered. I had no doubt it was some heirloom ornament, and for all its tackiness, it held a lot of sentimental value.

"Hey," I said. "You okay there, Matthew?"

He darted me a glare that could melt steel. "Get out." he said.

"Hey, I know you're mad at me, and I know you're feeling the weight of everything that's happened to your dad --" I started to say.

"And I suppose you want me to come down and be one big happy family like in some dumb Christmas special," he snapped back.

So much for our Hallmark Christmas card commercial moment. "Nope, nothing like that," I said. "Moments like that are as foreign to me as the dark side of the moon. I used to watch those kinds of shows when I was a kid, sitting in a hotel room, waiting for my dad to come home after his show, and it was like watching a sci-fi movie."

A small smile crossed his face, but it did not reach his eyes. He seemed determined to stay mad at me. "It's not the same," he said, looking away. "It's not the same without dad."

"No, it's not," I said. "But at least he's coming home soon. I know what it's like, but that first Christmas after I lost my dad, I didn't have the consolation that he'd be coming home. Yeah, the state found a foster family for me to stay with, but it wasn't the same as having my dad there to pull little cheap presents out of my ear."

"But he's so weak now, and it's all your fault," he snapped back, tears in his eyes.

God knows I'm no fatherly sort, but I wanted to reach out, and put a hand on his shoulder at that moment. But he had a point, however warped it might be by teenage anger. He turned his face away, shaking with the sobs he wouldn't want me to hear. I let him sob for a long moment, till the sobs lost their energy.

I closed the distance between him and I, stepping into the attic and kneeling down to his level. "He knew it was a matter of time before something like this would happen. I know that's an easy thing to say, and it's tough to live with it. And I know you're going to have moments like this in the days to come. You're not the only one beating me up over what happened out there on the lake. I'm doing a good job beating me up, I don't need an amateur trying to take a poke at me." He smirked a little at the rough jest. Growing serious again, I added, "But I think it would help him keep getting his strength back -- however much he can -- if he knew you were helping your mom and your sisters and little Harry along as much as you can."

"I'm trying to, but it's so hard," he said.

"Yeah, it is. The most we can do is take moment by moment, right?"

He managed a nod, then he looked up at me, meeting my gaze. "You suck at keeping promises, but promise me one thing: don't ask anything of us any more, you hear?" he said, a small flicker of that anger flaring up again.

"Try getting your crazy sister Molly to keep her nose out of my tougher cases," I said. He managed a small smirk at that jab. "But she's gotten better at it: she knows her weaknesses and her strengths."

"Yeah," he agreed. His gaze trailed back to the broken tree-topper.

"Now was that an accident or…?" I asked.

He dropped his gaze, guilty. "I dropped it and it broke, then I got mad and stomped on it," he admitted, in a low voice, clearly trying to keep Daniel from hearing about it. "Can you… I mean, is there some kind of magic that can fix it?"

"If there is, it's not really in my league," I admitted. "But I think I can pull a rabbit out of my ear." I focused on the red plastic sphere that formed the middle segment of the star and concentrated. I poured into it the memories of the good that had happened that year, the camaraderie with the young Wardens I was helping train, the shy friendliness of members of the Paranet, the closeness of the Carpenters. The sphere began to glow with a reddish light all its own that lit the attic.

"Wow…" Matthew breathed, then he looked up at me. "How are we going to keep that charged up?" he asked, the too-adult skepticism and worry creeping back.

"Think lovely thoughts," I said, and picking it up, handed the sphere to him. The light wavered as he took it, but he looked down at it, his eyes half-closed and thoughtful. Maybe his family had been through hell in just the past month, but he had fifteen years of good memories to keep that little light shining.

Daniel stuck his head up the stairs. "You guys coming down -- Whoa, what's that!" His eyes widened as he took in the sight of the glowing sphere in Matthew's hands.

"Bill made it for us," Matthew said. "I kind of dropped the tree-topper."

"Bring it down, everyone's gonna want to see it, " Daniel said.

I shuddered a little at the choice words Charity would probably have for the rigged tree-topper, but when she met us in the living room doorway, her eyes widened with wonder for a moment before her brows frowned.

"What happened to the tree-topper?" she asked.

"It kind of broke," Matthew admitted. "Bill fixed it up. We just gotta keep thinking lovely thoughts to keep it lit."

"Ooh, just like in Peter Pan?" Amanda squealed, bouncing up to get a better look.

"It's pretty!" Hope cried, clapping her little hands.

Even as the kids exclaimed over the magic tree-topper, and Daniel fetched a step-ladder to help his brother place the star on the tree, a look passed between Charity and Matthew hinting that a private conversation about the real fate of the tree-topper was in order, but that it would have to wait till later.

"You never liked that tree-topper anyway, Mom," Alicia said, matter-of-factly.

"I never said that," Charity said, gently indignant.

"You always rolled your eyes a little when Dad took it out of the box," Alicia said.

"Shuttit, Leech, you're embarrassing Mom in front of Bill," Matthew snipped back, stepping down from the ladder and letting Daniel climb up.

"Didn't you tell Dad you doubted the Star of Bethlehem looked like it?" Molly said, helping Alicia pass a string of lights up to Daniel.

"Well, it is -- it *was* very strange-looking," Charity admitted. Her gaze roved to me, and for once, her usual look of quiet distrust had melted away, replaced by quiet gratitude. I'm not sure if it was for the sputnik getting mangled, or if it was for its replacement, but anytime Charity regards me as anything but an outsider is all the Christmas present I need and the best star of hope I could have.


End file.
